FIG Working Week 2015: Recovery from Disaster
The FIG Working Week 2016 will be held in Christchurch, New Zealand from 2 to 6 May 2016. The Working Week is hosted by the International Federation of Surveyors, FIG and the New Zealand Institute of Surveyors (NZIS), as the local host. The overall theme of the Working Week is ‘Recovery from Disaster’.
There is a specific reason for choosing this theme. Shortly after 4.30 in the morning of Saturday 4 September 2010, an earthquake of magnitude 7.1 on the Richter scale shocked the population of the province of Canterbury into wakefulness. Cantabrians were yet to learn that this was but a taste of worse to come. Six months later, Canterbrians again experienced the earth move under their feet, and this time it was a deadly event. The second major earthquake struck on a sunny Tuesday lunch hour at 12.51 local time on 22 February 2011. This earthquake, on a different fault line, was centred two kilometres west of the port town of Lyttelton, and 10 kilometres south-east of the centre of Christchurch, New Zealand’s second-most populous city.
Post-earthquake Christchurch is an ideal venue for an international surveying conference with the theme ‘Recovery from Disaster’. It is being held at a time when considerable re-building and renewal is underway throughout the city and the areas of Canterbury affected by the 2010–2011 earthquakes sequence. Many inhabitants throughout the World face various kinds of disasters, such as above mentioned earth quakes, flooding, storm events, tsunamis, drought, the after effects of conflicts etc. All these disasters are a world-wide challenge, especially taking the effects of climate change into consideration. Disasters, natural or otherwise, both directly and indirectly impact surveyors and spatial professionals and their work on the land, under the seas, in the air and in space.
Support
The FIG Working Week 2016 has wide support within Christchurch and throughout New Zealand with a commitment already pledged by the Christchurch City Council and Land Information New Zealand; New Zealand’s government department responsible for land titles, geodetic and cadastral survey systems, topographic information, hydrographic information, managing Crown property and a variety of other functions.
The academic community and private practitioners are also committed to the FIG Working Week 2016. The conference expects to attract between 700–900 local and international delegates each of whom will be taking a ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity to visit New Zealand. Around 90–100 countries are normally represented at a FIG Working Week.
The technical programme will include a broad professional and scientific programme: during 3 consecutive days, offering up to 10 parallel sessions and workshops. This will allow more than 400 presentations in the entire broadness of the surveying profession. The carefully prepared Technical Programme will offer both specially invited high profile presentations and papers that are selected through the open call for papers procedure.
This Call for Papers is announced both for peer review papers and non-peer review papers. Abstracts for peer review paper are to be submitted in English by 1 October 2015 and abstract for non-peer-review paper by 15 November.
